Once I was happy with the porototype garment, and had made a few tweaks on my paper pattern, I cut out the fabric and the lining. the outer fabric is my own Spoonflower design, Shabby Paisley in blue. The lining in an off-white cotton lawn.

I had to take a photo of my hand-done topstitching to illustrate that hand sewing is not a poor relative to machine sewing. Quite the opposite. If you stop to think that so many beautiful gowns in the past, before sewing machines were invented, were all sewn by hand - and they were so heavy, the quality of sewing had to be good and strong!

This is how good hand stitching can be. With practice, it is as neat and strong as machine stitching:

By the way, the faint purple lines you can see on the top stitching in all these pictures, is vanishing ink. I use it to make sure my seams are perfect, and I could wet the garment to make it disappear, or if not, it will vanish completely in a few days to a week.

Here's the sewn corset from the back, I need to add snaps. The next one I make may well have eyelets, but I'm not sure. I find it hard to get eyelets neat. They seem to pull the fabric tight, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Perfect fit over the custom-made skirt. Yay.

I reshaped the front, after I'd done the prototype, and am very happy with that delicate shape, and the way it fits over the bust.

So now I feel I should decorate it. I did a search in Flickr for doll corsets, and some amazing, exquisite items came up, all decorated with lace, embroidery, lacings, and trim. But I'm so happy with the simplicity of this, the perfect cut, and the style, that it seems a bit of a shame to decorate it. I fall down a bit on decoration, I don't have much cash for lots of fancy trimmings, so I tend to concentrate my efforts on a perfect fit and excellent sewing. It seems a lot of people expect to pay less for simple garments though, so I never get what my garments are really worth when I sell them.